Epidemiology and management of aortic disease: aortic aneurysms and acute aortic syndromes

The aorta is the 'greatest artery', through which oxygenated blood is delivered from the left ventricle to end organs with each cardiac cycle (200 million litres of blood transported in an average lifetime). The aorta can be affected by a wide spectrum of acute factors (such as cocaine use, weight lifting and trauma) and chronic acquired and/or genetic conditions (such as systemic arterial hypertension and phaeochromocytoma), which variously...